discrimination of atheists

[FireIceTalon]

When you call someone else (me) a Mindless Patriot you affirm once again, for me, both your deliberate stupidity and your willful ignorance. Both are self inflicted wounds. I've been hearing the brand of tripe you spew for about four decades. It wasn't very sensible when I first heard it, and is less so now. It may be new to you, but it is tired old crap to me. Marx did some interesting work on understanding economic theory, but his political assumptions have been proven wrong again and again.

Thanks for not disappointing. I could almost set my watch to your foolishness.

Bun Bun: thank you for the link. The Mao era initiative "single child" policy is slowly eroding. We shall see, in the next generation, what choices people in China make when there are fewer restrictions. India had two thirds of the population of China in the late 60's, about 400 million to about 600 million. They have passed China.

Note: Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia ... significant numbers of large population nations are still at positive population growth numbers.

We'll see if the predictions and assumption in that article come to pass.

Occhi

Again, you calling anyone else stupid or willfully ignorant is just laughable, considering your posts are a self-reflection that you are dumber than a rock, as well as naive. You are a mindless patriotic drone that can't think for himself, because mass media does all your thinking for you. It's much easier that way, right? I don't hate you though. I actually pity you. Perhaps one day you will come out of Plato's Cave.

As for Marx, he's actually been proved RIGHT for the most part, time and again, and I've already explained why countless times. Then again, the shoddiness and inefficiency of the capitalist mode of production, on a DAILY basis at both an economic and social level, does far more justice to proving Marx right than I could ever hope to. The fact you even call his work on economics "theories" shows you have little understanding on what he wrote, but moreover you have little knowledge about the fundamental and inseparable relationship between economics and politics in general. They aren't theories - they are objective sociological phenomena and structural processes that have an actual functionality. The only thing Marx got "wrong" (if you can even call it that) was that he underestimated or overlooked the ability and power of the State to protect and enforce capitalist social relations - for example he didn't consider the fact the State could or would make concessions (such as the 8-hour work day) to preserve its long-term hegemony and larger interests by giving table scraps to the workers and thus discouraging revolution. Besides such concessions, it also uses ideological dominance through its institutions, as well as direct coercion. But this hardly even puts a dent in, let alone invalidates, his critiques and scientific analysis of how capitalism works - and in light of recent events, I'd say Marxism is more relevant today than it perhaps has ever been (even if leftist movements today are practically non-existent). Guys like Gramsci and Althusser took the framework of Marxism and further built upon it by analyzing the relationship of the State to culture and ideology, and how they function as a sociological process that maintains the relationships between classes under capitalism that Marx and Engels observed and described. Be as it may, so long as capitalism exists, so will Marxism.

Of course what I say isn't sensible to you. There is no getting through to people who use circular reasoning to justify their points or world views. To people like you, black is white and white is black, tall is short, short is tall. So yea, no surprise that what I say doesn't seem sensible to you. If I dropped a sack of bricks in a swimming pool, you'd probably tell me it was an act of God after it sunk to the bottom. Go figure.

The only tripe being spewed forth here is by YOU, with your nationalistic, flag-waving, crowd-following nonsense. Keep saluting those stars and stripes thinking you are some kind of fucking hero or that your "country" cares about you, in your little rainbow land of false consciousness and Stockholm Syndrome. Your ignorance speaks for itself. Grow up, go get an education, and learn to think critically. Your little city on the hill doesn't give a rats ass about you or anyone here, beyond being good little consumers/wage slaves and law abiding cattle to keep the capitalistic war machine going. It never has, and it never will. Think long and hard about that.